Where in the world are the people? What are some interesting statistics about the quality of life for the people of the world? (For example, how many large populations live great distances from clean water?

Where in the world are the people?

The percentage of people served with some form of improved water supply rose from 79% (4.1 billion) in 1990 to 82% (4.9 billion) in 2000. Over the  same period the proportion of the world's population with access to excreta disposal facilities increased from 55% (2.9 billion people served) to 60% (3.6 billion). At the beginning of 2000 one-sixth (1.1 billion people) of the world's population was without access to improved water supply and two-fifths (2.4 billion people) lacked access to improved sanitation. The majority of these people live in Asia and Africa, where fewer than one-half of all Asians have access to improved sanitation and two out of five Africans lack improved water supply. Moreover, rural services still lag far behind urban services. Sanitation coverage in rural areas, for example, is less than half that in urban settings, even though 80% of those lacking adequate sanitation (2 billion people) live in rural areas – some 1.3 billion in China and India alone.  These figures are all the more shocking because they reflect the results of at least twenty years of concerted effort and publicity to improve coverage.  (WHO, 2011)

Identify the ten most populated cities in the world. Identify the ten most populated cities in the United States. Identify tribal groups in the world that have little or no contact with "modern society". Where is the greatest ethnic diversity? Where is the least ethnic diversity?

10 most populated cities in the world

1.     Shanghai, China- 22,210,000

2.       Beijing, China - 22,000,000

3.       Istanbul, Turkey - 13,120,596

4.       Karachi, Pakistan - 13,052,000

5.       Delhi, India - 12,565,901

6.       Mumbai, India - 12,478,447

7.       Moscow, Russia - 11,514,300

8.       São Paulo, Brazil - 11,037,593

9.       Seoul, South Korea - 10,208,302

10.    Jakarta, Indonesia - 9,580,000

10 most populated cities in the United States

1. New York, New York 8,175,133

2. Los Angeles, California 3,792,621

3. Chicago, Illinois 2,695,598

4. Houston, Texas 2,099,451

5. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1,526,006

6. Phoenix, Arizona 1,445,632

7. San Antonio, Texas 1,327,407

8. San Diego, California 1,307,402

9. Dallas, Texas 1,197,816

10. San Jose, California 945,942

Researchers have produced aerial photos of jungle dwellers who they say are among the few remaining peoples on Earth who have had no contact with the outside world.Taken from a small airplane, the photos show men outside thatched communal huts, necks craned upward, pointing bows toward the air in a remote corner of the Amazonian rainforest.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/05/uncontacted_tribe_photographed.html


Greatest Ethnic Diversity, Kenya: Kikuyu 22%, Luhya 14%, Luo 13%, Kalenjin 12%, Kamba 11%, Kisii 6%, Meru 6%, other African 15%, non-African (Asian, European, and Arab) 1%

Least Ethnic Diversity, Lesotho: 99.7% Sotho

Where in the world is traditional industry? Where in the world is the high-tech industry?

The Indian economy has a thriving traditional industrial sector, which includes handloom products, coir fiber, cashews, tiles and bricks, handicrafts, spices, and marine products. This sector of the economy generates employment opportunities in rural areas and also earns foreign exchange through large-scale exports. In the liberalized economy of India, there are fears that the traditional industries may begin to disappear due to the presence and pressures of large industrial enterprises, both domestic and foreign.

High- tech industry

Many countries and regions like United States, Singapore, Canada, Greece, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, Iceland, Israel, Japan, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Australia, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Brazil and France can be in general considered high-tech societies in relation to other countries, since it is common for its citizens having access to technology that is presently at the cutting edge.

Silicon Valley is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations. The term originally referred to the region's large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area. Despite the development of other high-tech economic centers throughout the United States and the world, Silicon Valley continues to be the leading hub for high-tech innovation and development, accounting for 1/3 of all of the venture capital investment in the United States

Where in the world are the good and accessible soils for agriculture, silviculture, and farming?

Good soil for agriculture, farming, and  silviculture contains appropriate amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.

Alfisols — form in semiarid to humid areas, typically under a hardwood forest cover.

Andisols — soils formed in volcanic ash and defined as soils containing high proportions of glass and amorphous colloidal materials, including allophane, imogolite and ferrihydrite

Aridisols — (from the Latin aridus, for “dry”) form in an arid or semi-arid climate.

Entisols — are soils that do not show any profile development other than an A horizon

Gelisols — are soils of very cold climates which are defined as containing permafrost within two meters of the soil surface.

Histosols — a soil consisting primarily of organic materials

Inceptisols — form quickly through alteration of parent material

Mollisols — form in semi-arid to semi-humid areas, typically under a grassland cover

Oxisols — are best known for their occurrence in tropical rain forest

Spodosols — are the typical soils of coniferous, or boreal forests

Ultisols — commonly known as red clay soils

Vertisols — a soil in which there is a high content of expansive clay

Where is Earth's water located and in what forms does it exist? You can see how water is distributed by viewing these bar charts. The left-side bar shows where the water on Earth exists; about 97 percent of all water is in the oceans. The middle bar shows the distribution of that three percent of all Earth's water that is freshwater. The majority, about 69 percent, is locked up in glaciers and icecaps, mainly in Greenland and Antarctica. You might be surprised that of the remaining freshwater, almost all of it is below your feet, as ground water.

 

 

Picture of Earth showing if all Earth's water (liquid, ice, freshwater, saline) was put into a sphere it would be about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) in diameter. Diameter would be about the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, USA.Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; USGS.

Contaminated water.

People in the industrialized world generate 5 times more wastewater per person than in developing countries – but treat over 90% of the wastewater compared to only a few percent in developing countries

Below is an interesting link to the United Nations Environmental Program with some intresting information on the ongoing effort to transform wastewater from a major health and environmental hazard into a clean, safe and economically-attractive resource.

http://www.rona.unep.org/documents/news/20100322_press_release_sick_water_march_2010.pdf

Atlanta



I am interested in learning more about the public health benefits of alternative energy especially as it relates to alternative fuels.  I selected Atlanta, GA because it is where I reside and I feel there is a need to address the escalating concern of pollution in this rapidly growing city. Here are a couple links I thought were interesting:

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/index.html
http://www.epa.gov/greenkit/q5_energ.htm